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Defiant Speech by Assad Is New Block to Peace in Syria

In a battered neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria, residents propped up a masked and uniformed effigy of President Bashar al-Assad.Credit
Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Sounding defiant, confident and, to critics, out of touch with his people’s grievances, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria on Sunday used his first public address in six months to justify his harsh crackdown, rally his supporters to fight against his opponents and inform on them — and leave in tatters recent efforts toward a political resolution to the country’s bloody civil war.

Mr. Assad offered what he called a peace plan, including a new cabinet, a new constitution to replace the one adopted just last year in a widely dismissed reform package, and talks with officially tolerated opposition groups. But he ruled out any negotiations with the armed Syrian opposition, and pointedly ignored its demands that he step down, making his proposal a nonstarter for most of his opponents.

He sounded much as he did at the start of the uprising 21 months ago, dictating which opposition groups were worthy and labeling the rest terrorists and traitors. He gave no acknowledgment that the rebels have come to control large parts of the north and east of the country, nor that many ordinary Syrians continue to demand change in the face of a crackdown that has laid waste to neighborhoods and killed tens of thousands, nor that even longtime allies like Russia have signaled that Mr. Assad may be unable to defeat the insurgency.

He even dismissed as foreign interference the mediation efforts of the United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, the senior Algerian diplomat who visited Damascus on Dec. 24, warning of national disintegration if the two sides did not negotiate a solution.

“Everyone who comes to Syria knows that Syria accepts advice but not orders,” Mr. Assad told a cheering, chanting crowd at the Damascus Opera House, on Umayyad Square in the center of the capital, where residents said the security forces were deployed heavily starting the night before.

“He doesn’t seem to have moved an inch since summer 2011,” said Yezid Sayigh, an analyst at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, noting that Mr. Assad gave “barely the slightest nod” to Mr. Brahimi’s proposals.

Coming after days of hints that Mr. Assad might at last be ready to negotiate, his defiant speech on Sunday promised trouble for both his friends and his enemies. Russia may find it harder to stave off international action against Syria, which it has done so far using its veto at the United Nations Security Council, as the chances for a political solution seem to recede.

Moreover, Mr. Assad’s defiance may prompt Mr. Brahimi to decline to continue his mission. That would present the “Friends of Syria,” the group of nations supporting the opposition — the United States and its Western allies, Turkey and some Arab countries — with an unpalatable choice: intervene more aggressively or risk allowing the conflict to drag on indefinitely.

“Assad is not letting the Friends of Syria off the hook by making it easy for them to declare victory and close the Syria file,” Mr. Sayigh said. “Now what will they do?”

Photo

Syrians left the Old City of Aleppo on Sunday. The United Nations estimates more than 60,000 people have died in the civil war.Credit
Andoni Lubaki/Associated Press

The United Nations estimates that more than 60,000 people have died in the civil war, which began as a peaceful protest movement and turned into an armed struggle after security forces fired on demonstrators. Rebels have made gains in the north and east and in the Damascus suburbs, but Mr. Assad’s government has pushed back with deadly air and artillery strikes, and appears to be confident that it can hold the capital. Neither side appears ready to give up the prospect of military victory, though analysts say neither side is close to achieving it.

Mr. Assad’s defiant stance on Sunday “means we’re in for a long fight,” said Joshua Landis, a scholar on Syria and Mr. Assad’s minority sect, the Alawites, at the University of Oklahoma. “This is a dark, dark tunnel. There is no good ending to this. Assad believes he is winning.”

Victoria Nuland, the spokeswoman for the State Department, said in a statement that Mr. Assad’s speech was “yet another attempt by the regime to cling to power, and does nothing to advance the Syrian people’s goal of a political transition.” She said that even as Mr. Assad “speaks of dialogue, the regime is deliberately stoking sectarian tensions and continuing to kill its own people.”

Before the speech, Lebanese media outlets close to the Syrian government reported, citing unnamed sources, that Mr. Assad would be much more conciliatory, offering to share some power with the armed opposition. But if anyone close to Mr. Assad was pushing that view, it did not make it into the speech he delivered.

Instead, Mr. Assad repeated his longstanding assertions that the movement against him was driven by “murderous criminals” and terrorists financed by rivals such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia with American blessing.

“Who should we negotiate with — terrorists?” Mr. Assad said. “We will negotiate with their masters.”

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The main opposition body, the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, issued a statement calling the speech “a pre-emptive strike against both Arab and international diplomatic solutions.”

There was little immediate reaction in Russia, where the speech came on the eve of the Orthodox celebration of Christmas on Monday.

But Boris Dolgov of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Eastern Studies said the speech reflected a new push by Russia and other nations to resolve the crisis.

Mr. Dolgov told the Voice of Russia radio station that Mr. Assad was correct to assert in his speech that the first step toward a resolution of the civil war must be the cessation of aid for armed rebel groups, adding that the current situation was “complex, but not a dead end.”

Photo

Making his first speech in six months on Sunday, President Bashar al-Assad justified his crackdown on the armed rebels.Credit
Sana, via European Pressphoto Agency

In Midan, a contested neighborhood of southern Damascus, a shopkeeper said that Mr. Assad’s speech had dashed his hopes that the president would end the conflict.

“He divided Syrians in two camps, one with him who are patriots and one against him who are criminals, terrorists and radicals,” said the shopkeeper, who gave only a nickname, Abu Omar, for safety reasons. “He doesn’t see Syrians who are patriots but don’t like him, and want to have another president in democratic, fair elections.”

Mr. Assad, whose family has ruled Syria for 42 years, said Sunday that he was open to dialogue with “those who have not sold Syria to foreigners,” most likely a reference to tolerated opposition groups that reject armed revolution, such the National Coordinating Body for Democratic Change. But his speech appeared unlikely to satisfy even those opponents, since it made no apology for the arrests of peaceful activists or for airstrikes that have destroyed neighborhoods. Nor did he acknowledge that his opponents sought anything but ruin for Syria.

“They killed the intellectuals in order to inflict ignorance on us,” Mr. Assad said of his opponents. “They deprived children from school in order to bring the country backward.”

Some armed rebel groups have used techniques that randomly target civilians, like car bombs, and there are foreign fighters among the rebels. But most of the armed movement is made up of Syrians who took up arms during the uprising or defected from the armed forces.

Mr. Assad thanked military officers and conscripts in the speech and vowed to stay by their side, seeking to dispel speculation that he would flee the country.

The audience of government officials and university students at the opera house chanted, “With our souls, with our blood, we defend you, Assad,” and vowed to be his “shabiha,” a term that has come to mean progovernment militias that have attacked demonstrators.

When the president finished speaking, scores of people rushed frantically to greet him, and his bodyguards formed a phalanx to slowly escort Mr. Assad through the crowd.

Several observers noted in social media postings that the opera house seemed a fitting setting for such a speech.

“It was operatic in its otherworldly fantasy, unrelated to realities outside the building,” Rami Khouri, the editor of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, wrote on Twitter.

Reporting was contributed by Hania Mourtada from Beirut; an employee of The New York Times from Damascus, Syria; Eric Schmitt from Washington; and Ellen Barry from Moscow.

A version of this article appears in print on January 7, 2013, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Syria President’s Defiant Words Are Another Roadblock to Peace. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe